Pau Gasol

• 1. Introduction

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  Pau Gasol Sáez was born on the 6th of July, 1980, in Barcelona, at Sant Pau Hospital, where both of his parents worked. He was 11 years old when Magic Johnson announced his HIV-positive status in 1991, and that news, heard at school, shifted something in him. The boy who had grown up playing rugby, then basketball, in the city of Sant Boi de Llobregat decided he wanted to become a doctor and find a cure for AIDS. He enrolled in medical school at the University of Barcelona in 1998. He left after one year, because basketball had other plans.

  What followed was one of the most decorated careers in the history of the sport. Two NBA championships. Six All-Star appearances. A World Cup title. Three EuroBasket gold medals. And a historic record as the all-time leading scorer in EuroBasket history. But the statistics only tell part of the story. The questions that run beneath this documentary are simpler and more personal: who was Pau Gasol, really, and how did a shy, bookish teenager from Catalonia become one of the greatest power forwards the game has ever seen?

• 2. The Gasol Family

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  Both of Pau's parents played basketball in organized leagues. His father Agustí, a nurse administrator, stood 6 feet 3 inches tall. His mother Marisa, a medical doctor, stood 6 feet 1 inch. In the Gasol household, height and sport and science were all woven together from the beginning.

  The family moved to Sant Boi de Llobregat when Pau was six years old, and he spent the rest of his childhood there. He is described in the source material as a family boy, the perfect student, a tad shy and a bit of a joker. Those qualities stayed with him. While playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, he and Kobe Bryant spoke to each other during games in Spanish to keep opponents from understanding their signals.

  His younger brother Marc, who stands 6 feet 11 inches and weighs 255 pounds, also reached the NBA. Marc was drafted by the Lakers in 2007, but his rights were sent to Memphis as part of the deal that brought Pau to Los Angeles. Their youngest brother, Adrià, played in Switzerland, where his coach noted he was built like Pau with a mean streak like Marc. After returning to Spain, Adrià enrolled at UCLA in August 2012 and joined the basketball team as a walk-on.

  When Pau signed with the Grizzlies, his parents moved to the Memphis suburb of Germantown, Tennessee, enrolling Marc and Adrià at Lausanne Collegiate School. When Pau was later traded to the Lakers, the family had planned to follow, but Marc's decision to stay with Memphis meant the parents remained in Germantown. Marisa eventually began volunteering at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

• 3. The Grizzlies Years

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  Atlanta selected Gasol with the third overall pick in the 2001 NBA draft, then traded his rights to the Vancouver Grizzlies in exchange for Shareef Abdur-Rahim and the 27th pick in that same draft, Jamaal Tinsley. The franchise was headed to Memphis, and so was Gasol.

  In his first NBA season, he became the first foreign-born player to win the Rookie of the Year Award, averaging 17.6 points and 8.9 rebounds per game, and playing in all 82 games. He played in all 82 games the following year as well. His consecutive-games streak reached 240 before a foot injury on the 5th of April, 2004, finally ended it.

  On the 31st of October, 2003, he scored his 3,000th career point against the Boston Celtics. On the 12th of November that year, he grabbed his 1,500th career rebound against the Orlando Magic. On the 11th of January, 2005, he scored 31 points and blocked four shots against the Indiana Pacers to reach 5,000 career points and 500 career blocks, becoming the 10th fastest player since 1973-74 to reach that combined milestone.

  Gasol eventually shattered franchise record after franchise record in Memphis. When he was traded to the Lakers on the 1st of February, 2008, he held twelve Grizzlies franchise records, including games played, minutes played, field goals made, free throws made and attempted, offensive, defensive, and total rebounds, blocked shots, turnovers, and points. He had signed a six-year, $86.5 million extension back in 2005. When he left, the franchise had received more than it could have expected from the teenager who arrived from Barcelona.

• 4. Laker Gold

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  Gasol made his first Lakers appearance on the 5th of February, 2008, in a win over the New Jersey Nets, scoring 24 points and collecting 12 rebounds. He moved to Redondo Beach after the trade, living across the street from the shoreline. Kobe Bryant later stated that playing with Gasol clicked from the start.

  In his first season with Los Angeles, Gasol helped the Lakers reach the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics. He led the team in rebounding throughout the championship series, averaging 10.2 per game. Los Angeles lost in six games, including a 131-92 loss in Game 6. He had become, along the way, the first Spaniard to reach the NBA Finals.

  The Lakers won back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010. In the 2009 Finals against the Orlando Magic, Gasol claimed his first ring. In Game 7 of the 2010 Finals against the Boston Celtics, he scored 19 points, grabbed 18 rebounds, and recorded two blocks, averaging 18.6 points, 11.6 rebounds, and 2.6 blocks per game across the series on 47.8% shooting.

  Phil Jackson challenged Gasol to be more assertive at the start of the 2010-11 season, while Bryant recovered from offseason knee surgery. In the season's first week, Gasol averaged 25.3 points on 52.5% shooting, 10.3 rebounds, and five assists per game as the Lakers started 3-0. Bryant would later say of him: "You'd be hard-pressed to find a big man with his skill set in the history of the game."

  The final Lakers years were difficult. Injuries, coaching changes, and a changing roster wore at Gasol. In the 2012-13 season, he was limited to a career-low 49 games and career lows in points and shooting percentage. He tore the plantar fascia of his right foot on the 5th of February, 2013, against the Brooklyn Nets, an injury he played through until he felt it pop when trying to block a shot by Brook Lopez. He became a free agent after the 2013-14 season, when his contract cost the Lakers approximately $50 million including luxury taxes.

• 5. Spain's Greatest

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  Gasol's first competition with the senior Spanish national team came at the 2001 EuroBasket, where he won a bronze medal. He was named the Spanish Sportsman of the Year in 2001.

  He was the highest-scoring player at the 2004 Summer Olympics. At the 2006 FIBA World Championship, he missed the tournament's opening 23 games due to a broken foot, having suffered the injury in Spain's semifinal win over Argentina. He recovered and was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player as Spain won the title. Spain also won the EuroBasket in 2009 and 2011, with Gasol named MVP in 2009.

  The 2015 EuroBasket stands as perhaps his most extraordinary international performance. He was 35 years old. Spain was missing numerous key players, including Ricky Rubio, Juan Carlos Navarro, Álex Abrines, and his brother Marc. In the semifinal against France, Gasol scored 40 points, which was half of his team's entire total. He averaged 25.6 points and 8.8 rebounds per game in the competition, led the tournament in scoring, and was named the competition's leader in blocked shots per game at 2.3. He was named MVP.

  On the 7th of September, 2017, in a game against Hungary, Gasol passed Tony Parker to become EuroBasket's all-time leading scorer, surpassing 1,033 points. He ended his EuroBasket career with 1,183 total points. He was named to the FIBA EuroBasket 2000-2020 Dream Team in 2020, and his tally of two EuroBasket MVP awards ties the record held jointly with Krešimir Ćosić.

  Spain also carried Gasol to the flag-bearing role at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, where he replaced the injured Rafael Nadal. He won silver at those Games and at the 2008 Olympics, and bronze at the 2016 Games.

• 6. Beyond the Court

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  Medicine never left Gasol's life. At Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, he went further than most athlete visitors. On one visit, he posed detailed, well-informed questions to a group of doctors treating children with scoliosis. The hospital's chief of orthopedic surgery, Dr. David Skaggs, said of him: "We talk to him now almost like he is a surgical colleague." Gasol had originally planned to observe a spinal surgery in April 2010 but cancelled when he developed a low-grade fever, not wanting to risk infecting anyone. He rescheduled and in June 2010 watched Skaggs lead a team operating on a 13-year-old girl from Colorado.

  In 2003, Gasol was named a UNICEF ambassador, and he traveled on multiple occasions to Africa to take part in the organization's projects there. He received the Corazón de Oro from the Spanish Heart Foundation in 2004 for his commitment to solidarity work. In 2010, UNICEF's Pau Project launched in Ethiopia, directed at fighting infant malnutrition, which the source notes claims more than 2 million children's lives each year, and at securing access to education. In July 2019, UNICEF named Gasol Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity.

  In 2013, along with Marc, he established the Gasol Foundation to promote community health and combat childhood obesity. In September 2019, the Foundation presented the Estudio Pasos, a pioneering study examining obesity and physical inactivity in children and adolescents between 8 and 18 years of age.

  In May 2018, Gasol published an open letter in The Players Tribune defending women coaches and specifically advocating for Becky Hammon's candidacy as an NBA coach. He noted that in the league's then-72 years of history, no woman had ever held a head coaching position.

  His personal life carried similar depth. He taught himself Italian and French, adding them to his childhood Catalan and Spanish and his acquired English. He reads historical novels, plays French classical music on the keyboard, and attends operas. He is a friend of the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo and visits him backstage after performances. He married Catherine McDonnell in July 2019. Their daughter, Elisabet Gianna Gasol, was born on the 13th of September, 2020, her middle name a tribute to Kobe Bryant's late daughter, with Vanessa Bryant as her godmother.

• 7. Legacy and Retirement

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  On the 12th of April, 2017, against the Utah Jazz, Gasol scored 13 points to reach 20,000 career points, becoming the second European player in NBA history to reach that mark after Dirk Nowitzki.

  His final NBA stop was Milwaukee in 2019, where he played just three games before a left ankle injury ended his season. He had surgery on his foot on the 9th of May, 2019. He signed with Portland in July 2019 but was waived in November without having played a game.

  On the 23rd of February, 2021, Gasol returned to FC Barcelona in the Spanish Liga ACB. He won the 2020-21 ACB championship with the club and helped them reach the final of the 2020-21 EuroLeague, where they lost to Anadolu Efes. On the 5th of October, 2021, he announced his retirement from professional basketball.

  Gasol finished his NBA career having played 1,226 regular-season games, averaging 17.0 points, 9.2 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 1.6 blocks per game over 18 seasons, shooting 50.7% from the field. He recorded over 550 double-doubles. He was the 36th player in NBA history to reach 10,000 points and 10,000 rebounds, and only the fourth player with 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, 3,500 assists, and 1,500 blocks.

  In 2021, he became a member of the International Olympic Committee. In 2023, the announcement came that Gasol would be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. His number 16 had already been retired by the Los Angeles Lakers on the 7th of March, 2023, a ceremony that formalized what the statistics had long suggested: that the shy boy from Sant Boi who once wanted to cure AIDS had left the sport having changed it.